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   Summary II - 5 - (28 February - 12 March)


FOLLOWING IS A MACHINE TRANSLATION OF THE ORIGINAL IN FRENCH. IT HAS BEEN EDITED FOR MISTRANSLATION ONLY. THE ORIGINAL IN FRENCH IS AVAILABLE ON THIS WEB SITE AT: <http://www.ue-acp.org/fr/forum/syntheses/syntII5.html>

KEY WORDS: EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION; EXCHANGE OF EXPERIENCES; CIRCULATION OF INFORMATION; COLLECTIVE COOPERATION WATCH; FORMS OF TRANSFER; RELAYS

* * Title: Summary II - 5 - (28 February - 12 March) * *

by: Anne SIMON <anne.simon@skynet.be>
<http://www.ue-acp.org/en/forum/presentations/simon.html>

°°° Abstract:
Information responds to a need of opening, to be considered and taken in account. It is therefore a relation of reciprocity and exchange that must guide the development of a system aiming at information on cooperation. Two features of the public forum are specified. The function of information sharing (to abandon the logic of transfer and preconceptions in order to understand otherwise, to get the best out of local knowledge, to join initiatives, to encourage innovation and to make possible concerted actions) and the circulation of information (thanks to information brokers, specialized organizations, calling on all existing media types according to the different publics. Based on the experiences of each, could other we consider further: What techniques for "bringing up information", how to connect the different intervening parties and social contexts, how to reconcile the interests of all on a territory?

Several proposals have been made for the weeks to come: to tell how one ensures a relay between the forum and its outside environment, to test criteria of the quality of project transparency by giving examples, and to multiply information sharing thanks to the forum.

In parallel the topic of education has been discussed. From the first contributions it stands out that development education must be conducted as much in the North that in the South and that in these two cases, it must lead to another view on poverty and the Third World and must contribute to the dignity and capacity of initiative of populations. °°°

1 - Information : a need of opening and to be heard

Michel Ansay was struck at the time of his stay in Butembo (Democratic Republic of Congo) by the need of information, simultaneously to come out of the confinement and to be heard or read. Finding lack of information on the convention of Lome, the operation "Couleurs Lome" was been launched by SOS Hunger. This campaign allowed several ACP farmers' organizations to express their concerns and questionings before the opening of the EU-ACP negotiations resulting in international agreements, the consequences of which will be great on the agriculture of their countries (Jean-Jacques Grodent).

2 - Further precision on the function of the information sharing

At the time of the last two weeks [Summary II-4 <http://www.ue-acp.org/en/forum/syntheses/syntII4.html> (*)], the function of information sharing had been defined. Further precision has been brought:

In background, Michel Ansay recalls that a true relation of partnership is a relation of exchanges. It makes it possible to enrich each other mutually.

Information sharing allows:

  • to come out of the logic of the transfer

    Michel Ansay explains that it is necessary to go beyond the simple North-South transfer that was developed from the cultural gaps and the recurrent deficit of information (example of the Lome Convention mentioned by Grodent). He details the consequences of it on the African universities. The globalizing scientific ideology conducted often in universities of the South relegated them to passive containers of a standardized knowledge and to remain deaf to local knowledge. For Jules Dumas Nguebou it is necessary to come out "of a consumption of cooperation precepts" in order to enter into social communication (to connect the different social levels).

  • to come out of preconceptions and to understand things differently

    Jean-Jacques Grodent and Aliou Sall deplore the disaster-based and degrading image of Africa conveyed by the media and anchored in the minds of the North. Sall tells thus how his conferences showing "the other image of the Third World" provoked in the Swiss public a new understanding of Africa and poverty.

  • to get the best out of knowledge

    Michel Ansay also explains how experience sharing, research and universities can make possible to know and to recognize local knowledge and its vocation to universality.

  • to join initiatives, to encourage innovation and to make possible concerted actions

    Jules Dumas Nguebou describes the effects of the exchange, for example, in the districts of Yaounde where his network of educators conducts actions. The discovery of other examples of mobilization conducted populations to be organized and to undertake some common actions. In the Republic of Congo, the exchange of products provided an answer to problems of the farmers and breeders of the BUSHI. Exchange days are organized among farmers and breeders. Exchanges between farmers' organizations of the South and European, and of the institutional bodies, made possible for organizations of the South to define their expectations on the new EU-ACP Convention (Jean-Jacques Grodent).

  • to democratize information

* A key of the exchange: rooting in experience *

Jules Dumas Nguebou, presenting the RAEP (African network of popular educators, of Cameroon, Benin and Mali), tells how the experience sharing conducted with the DPH (Dialogue for humankind's progress) method among the popular educators of the network made possible to improve capitalization and learning, and to help in the constitution of the strategy of the network (in terms of purposes and strategies to develop citizenship) while calling on the traditional forms of communication and mediation.

3 - Further thoughts on the circulation of information

Michel Ansay thinks that it is necessary to be interested:

  • in the way in which information is circulated: he speaks of capillarity and osmosis
  • in the way in which this information is received, which determines their usability
  • in cultural diversity

Different contributions give a set of leads resulting from experience for the circulation of information:

  • to recognize the "cultural ferrymen" or "relays of opinion", for example agronomists, veterinarians in the rural zones, members of the Diaspora via Internet, professors, etc.;
  • to have distributors of information (press agencies for example) ;
  • to conjugate traditional and modern media (information reports, newsletters, leaflets, video sessions, listening sessions, theater, storytellers, radio shows);
  • to adapt the medium to the public ;
  • to make available on Internet data banks on experiences and traditional knowledge;

Jules Dumas Nguebou proposes to specify some of these leads:

  • What techniques make possible of "to bring up the voice of the farmer" and a better citizens' expression?
    (What does he mean precisely by citizens' expression?)
  • How to connect different social contexts and the different intervening parties?
  • How to reconcile various centers of interest around the development of a district, a country or a region?

4 - Questions on the EU-ACP forum

The mediation by relay people or organizations participating in the EU-ACP forum

Pierre Calame proposed in the month of September the creation of an independent inter-agency forum of public debate on international aid "viewed from the bottom" and the setting up of a permanent system of information and experience sharing on the Web. The different components of this forum have been the object of discussion on this forum, and are currently being tested.

==> He launched a call to participants for news experiences testifying to the widened circulation of the content of the forum by certain participants who play the role of collective relays or use the information to transmit it to them. To launch such a forum, we have to show that behind the network of participants, another vast network is part of the dynamics.

Collective cooperation watch

A discussion on project quality criteria had been started in September 1999 on this forum. R. Segbenou came back to an experience report (construction of a school) as the anchorage for this discussion. Pierre Calame proposed to study thoroughly together the criteria of the ethics of the transparency of development projects. He presented a process of labeling in three stages to the participants of the forum: to express the criteria of quality; commitment of a number of operators on this criteria; public project reports on projects affirming to comply with this quality label to allow monitoring of effective compliance with it.

Aliou Sall reminds us that this collective watch is also necessary in the North--where democratic control is not as good as one could think--and that development education can contribute to it. Would not this collective control in the North deserve to be specified?

* Call for information and resources on the forum *

The Forum Coordination recalls the existence of the categories INFO and RESOURCE on the forum (numerous contributions of this week refer to them). Don't hesitate to use them.

5 - Development education

Several intervening parties insisted on the fact that development education must make possible through exchange to generate another image of the South. It also has to be done in the South and give back to the populations, depreciated until now, the confidence in their values and the vocation to the universality of their knowledge. The NGOs of the South--dependent on funds for projects from the North--must contribute to this by no longer transmitting the systematic image of poverty of the Third World (Aliou Sall).

Jean-Jacques Grodent speaks of the articulation between lobby and actions of development education. When mentioning the operation "Couleurs Lome ", he shows that among the challenges of information for farmers' organizations of the South there is also to make international conventions (including the new convention of Lome) take into account the defense of their agriculture. He raises the question of the monitoring of these conventions by farmers' organizations.


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 INFORMATION
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* Declaration of Douala resulting from the forum of organizations of the ACP civil society. In this declaration, signatories make recommendations so that the civil society participates in the EU-ACP cooperation. Among these there is the setting up of "institutionalized mechanisms", the key question of the provision of information, and the establishment of transparent procedures for monitoring good governance. http://www.africances.com/congac/main1L7.htm> (*) [in French only]

* The operation "Couleurs Lome", organized on the initiative SOS Faim Belgique by several European NGOs and their partner ACP farmers' organizations. <http://www.ue-acp.org/en/documents/grodent.html> (*)

* Stockholm Contest Award, a contest of projects of promotion of development and the use of technologies of information. <http://www.challenge.stockholm.se/left.asp> (*)

Anne SIMON
Forum Coordination <moderation@ue-acp.org> <http://www.ue-acp.org/fr/forum/participants.html>


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